Chapter 7: Everyone Died. The Ending of my Marriage.

My mom died in 2014. My dad in 2018. And yes those losses were hard, and I'm uncovering grief in that history. It was devastatingly sad to be orphaned before I turned 30, but neither of those loses completely upturned my life like losing Moon, did.

Moon was my shadow

I mean that in emotional shadow and also that she followed me. Everywhere.

I felt that Moon had a similar history to me. Her and her brother and mom were found under an overpass in Taiwan in 2017. The Mom so badly injured that she lost an eye and Moon and her brother Sun were undernourished. After being rescued Moon bonded closely with her brother, but needed him around to be safe. When she came to the US, she was separated from her brother, and had a difficult time adjusting.

I felt a strong affinity to Moon, and bonded closely with her. My ex and I had another dog, Beauty, but he had picked her out without much input from me before bringing her home. I loved Beauty, but she was very much bonded to my ex. Moon was the pup that I picked to rescue, and my first real pet of my own, so I felt a strong affinity to this. Moon was a big scaredy-cat, and I was too. She seemed to have only been on the streets for a short time, yet the trauma responses were extremely elevated in her. I could related to that.

I would say things like Moon is my spirit animal. Since she was spayed and couldn't have puppies, I would joke that I wanted to clone her because she was the perfect dog for me. And that would upset my ex because I was being unfair to Beauty by having favorites. Beauty received love from me too, but honestly, I think he was the one who was jealous and insecure of "favorite" siblings based on his own history.

The Moon Waning into Darkness

By the end of 2021, Moon was sick. That was the same time that I found out after our wedding that Severus didn't want kids and had no desire to have a family.

Severus was the one who originally advocated for kids. After 2016 with drinks with his brothers, he came home adamant that he wanted to have a family. He wanted a girl and I wanted a boy. But I also knew that I didn't want my child to endure the same trauma I did, nor did I want them to have a relationship with my father who was still alive. I was scared, but very much curious to ponder the question, if I could become a mother. Initially Severus was supportive, especially after we adopted Beauty and Moon. But then after the wedding and hearing that I mentioned kids in my vows, his tone switched. It was now, "you like to sleep in, you're not going to be able to do that with a kid" or "you barely want to get up to take the dogs out, you're not going to be able to just ignore your kids." And subtle jabs like "you need to lose weight first before having a kid." Yes, these things were true, but the hope and support of "you can do it" was suddenly gone.

At that time, in the end of 2021, he gave me a laundry list of excuses, but never a real answer. "Kids are too expensive," "We can't afford daycare," "You can't stay home to take care of the children and would need to return to work immediately", "You have to lose 20-30lbs first" , etc. I was shocked, but since I was never a 100% on the "need kids", side of the fence, I thought I could maybe adjust to a no. I didn't realize that he was 100% no, I thought the excuses were somewhat real. But at the same time, I couldn't understand his sudden switch. He had been wanting this all along, why did a "no" come out of nowhere.

But by the beginning of 2022, I had no time to ponder these things, because in my immediate attention my pup was losing her luster. By April 2022, I had a diagnosis. Without a 27K surgery she would die, even with the surgery she still might die. I asked Severus to split the costs with me and he refused, saying it was too much to spend on a dog for a "maybe". That's important, cause the same rules didn't apply to his dog, Beauty, when it wasn't a "maybe" but a definite "no" a few short years later.

Severus also wouldn't let me put Moon down. It was always "you just want to kill my dog" or "she ate most of her food today, she's fine." Meanwhile when she was up in the middle of the night, needing to go out, he couldn't be bothered cause he had work in the morning (I did too). He couldn't be bother to shove the medicine that she needed down her throat, cause she wouldn't eat it, because it made him uncomfortable. All of 2022, I watched my dog decline steadily, and at the end she didn't even look like herself.

A week before her death, I was having coffee with a friend and telling her about how Moon started to eat my lamp light cables, phone charging, and laptop cables. She was also chewing on her bed. The friend, said maybe she wants to be "disconnected" too, and I thought it was a beautiful metaphor. I told Severus and he screamed at me that it was "the stupid shit he had ever heard" and that "I just want to kill Moon."

A few days later Moon wasn't herself. She went on a rampage destroying my plants, lights, and took a poop in the house - something she hadn't done since she was a baby. She also grew a large lump on her leg, which was extremely abnormal. Severus again insisted she was fine. After I woke up to Moon's cries to go out multiple times, by the middle of the night she was drooling profusely and couldn't even stand on her own. She was profusely drooling shell, and couldn't even acknowledge my presence. It was clearly time to let her go and even Severus couldn't argue otherwise.

All alone, I carried Moon down the stairs to her final resting spot. On the day she was euthanized, I was utterly devastated. Two days from her 6th birthday, my moon, my soulmate, my shadow, my "child" was gone.

As I was crying in his arms, Severus had the audacity to say "I've been thinking about getting a new dog."

I fucking lost it

I told Severus yet again about his callous emotionality and how it was causing me harm. Like old times, he apologized and promised to go get help and seek therapy. By this time, I had lost both my parents, had to sell my family home, buried my beloved Moon, and I was living in a home where I was not a priority for my partner. I was watching this time, hopeful he'd follow through, but starting to see a pattern.

So it was no surprise that a month later, at the top of 2023 Severus was back to his old ways. When I asked him about the therapy that he promised to do "he was too busy" and "didn't have time." I moved into my office and asked for a divorce. Once he realized I was serious, he begged for couples counseling as an option. My first session with our couples' therapist, I said "I don't know why I'm here, Severus is the one who needs individual therapy on his own. I don't see any point in couples counseling at this point, without him doing his own work."

And yet, it would be months until he started his own therapy, and even then it was searching for excuses. The reason why he couldn't prioritize me was that he had ADHD.* It was also why he was insensitive, unempathetic, and resistant to any feedback. Meanwhile, he continued to try to use therapy to manipulate me into believing a life without kids would be a good one. He never positively entertained the idea of a life with children with me. But he continued to push for another dog, which I eventually did cave on. And that is how I met Rainbow, but that's a different post.

*I have to add the caveat that none of those things are true to folks with ADHD.  

But something felt off. He still was prioritizing friends, and trying to convince me that he had ADHD, and cared about me, while still not respecting my boundaries or making any true efforts. Eventually, by the end of July, I had put together all the pieces of his lies together and figured out the truth. What I came to realize was that he truly was an expert manipulator and liar. And I had no idea what was coming, but all the while, he had already started to prepared for this ending years ago. Because as the perpetrator of the crime, he was the only one that held the truth, while I was searching for breadcrumbs.

Severus and his perpetual abandonment

In looking back, I see that Severus never really wanted a wife or a family. What he actually desired was friends, but he struggled with non-sexual relationships. I realized later this is probably tied to the childhood abuse by a "friend". I could never get him to confirm it, but very likely that "friend" was a connection of one of his older half-siblings. In hindsight, both family and friends are broken concepts for Severus. As soon as Severus and I married, Severus felt I wasn't going anywhere and he had no incentive to care about me anymore. Additionally, he realized that having a wife, a home, and dogs elevated his social capital and gave him leverage to land a good career job. All of this allowed him to safely acquire what he actually wanted. Friends.

Shortly before COVID my friends and I convinced Severus to join a Dungeons and Dragons (DND) game with us. After initially complaining how nerdy it was, he soon became fully consumed by the world building and storytelling. Eventually, we finished our tale during COVID, and afterwards he branched out to find a new DND group. As soon as he started to spend more time with these folks, they became his friends, and I became less of a priority. He couldn't plan a trip or go on a date because he had to prep for DND. He couldn't hang out with me, because his DND group was going to play Pokémon. Busy. Busy. Busy.

On the backend of things, I was also being gaslighted. Anytime, I would bring it to his attention that he was not making time to do things with me the diverting tactics came flying back. Severus would say, "I guess you don't want me to have friends" or "You are being selfish" or my personal favorite, "I see you all the time, we live together." He asked me to give up my dream of having kids, and I did. But then he actively started to abandon me, by prioritizing anything other than our relationship.

And I really thought, maybe I'm just imagining things and being dramatic. At the time, I was also severely depressed. I was emotionally eating and sleeping my life away from 2020 - 2022, trapped in a beautiful home, having a so-called-happy life, but feeling miserable and alone. Part of that was the trauma of being "stuck at home" and the other part was the familiar feeling that home wasn't safe. Severus was actively contributing to that by not being emotionally available to me. I couldn't hold tight to a partner, who had no desire to be there. At the end, he even unwittingly admitted this to me - he was okay with me leaving me him, as long as he still had his "friends."

He desired those friendships more that me, because he always had a partner, girlfriend, or lover, but he never had real friends. In fact, when I met him, despite still living in his hometown, he had no long term friends from primary-high school or even college. Severus knew that with me leaving, he could still play the victim and manipulate and lie to his friends. Likely in his story, I'm the one who abandoned him. I learned of his darkest secret and left him in his time of crisis. How I feel for his poor "friends" and "lovers" not understanding that he is always the victim of a crime of his own making.

A Professional Level of Lies and Deceptions

It's important to be clear, that by no means was I a perfect partner. In fact, I probably was the worst person to Severus because I pushed him to be vulnerable when he did not desire to be. I'm also sure, I swung as many jabs I as I received back. History is always cloudier on what you have done, versus what has been done to you. I write this not to undermine his truth, of who I was to him, but let me be clear in the difference between us.

I would have never lured someone into a position by hoping they would fail. Before we got married, he knew I was interested in trying to be a parent, and he knew what that meant for him. Worse, he sat on that information and didn't seek help for himself, nor did he give me any agency to make an informed decision. Whatever crime I committed to him, did not make me deserving of being lured into a false marriage with the intent to cause me to fail at my dreams of being a parent. Severus may claim his intent was to protect himself, but that means he should also accept the full implications of the impact of that choice.

And if dare to question how I missed it, do you really know what your partner, friends, lovers, parents, children, etc, are doing every literal second of the day? Do you check their browser history? Do you watch their phone screen and monitor in real time what they are doing. Keep in mind, that no one, not even his parents, or closest friends had a clue either. Severus had been doing criminal activities for decades without being caught by the law, friends, family, or even his partners. I think it's safe to say, he's good at what he does.

The Truth of Severus' Real Identity

What I knew early on was that Severus was sexually abused as a child by an older child. If you recall, he told me that as one of the reasons that he was emotionally unavailable when I threatened to leave as early as 2015. This childhood wound by another older child- who I can only assume he thought of as a "friend," and subsequent lost of future friendships, is also likely why he valued friendships more. Although I already knew his CSA history, I didn't fully know the extent of the crimes that he kept hidden in his heart that extended from that. In doing therapy research on sexual abuse victims during our couples counseling in 2023, I figured out the real reason why his 'yes' for kids, changed to a hard 'no' as soon as it became a real possibility. Many of the websites, articles, and books that I found didn't exist or would have been so obscure that I likely would have never come across them in 2016.

Severus always portrayed himself as a victim, but he kept silent of crossing the border from victim to victimizer. He carefully curated an outside persona, all the while on the inside he stifled his wounds, into destructive "creative outputs."

The main outlet of his pain, was watching videos and recordings other children be victimized and gaining pleasure from it. "This wasn't a crime" Severus claimed, because he never created, produced, "downloaded, or possessed" any of these child sexual abuse materials. In his mind, he was just a passive observer of what already existed. Yet, he also told me brazenly, that he had been watching videos of this for decades, and throughout the entirety of our relationship. He also boldly claimed that he'd venture out and personally commit these crimes if it wouldn't land him in prison. And that he couldn't change his sexuality.*

If my marriage was over the moment I put the puzzle pieces together to confront him, that is the moment that I went into flight or flight and froze. I could not fathom that being the same part of the person that I had loved for the last decade so I rejected it. But I would come to find out, that lack of empathy, questionable ethics, and rejection of authority are indeed parts of his true self. And they are all parts that he refused to acknowledge or heal for decades. Instead he let them roam free and covered for their crimes.

After a long struggle to support him or not, I realized that he would never be able to respect me after the nature of our intimate relationship. Furthermore, he didn't actually want me, he wanted friends, which was already met elsewhere. I was an inconvenient person that held his truth, and would hold him accountable for growth. I could not be the one who would make him do the work that needed to be done. Instead, I started to safely distance myself from him, and turn inward, and wonder, how I too had been bamboozled. Did I not see the tragic story of my mom and dad, my grandma and grandpa? How did I end up in the same tale?

A few weeks after I asked for a divorce, Beauty was diagnosed with leukemia.

Leukemia is an incurable cancer? I remember asking the vet this, mistakenly believing that it was curable in people. It's not. But Beauty somewhat benefited from the tragedy that we faced with Moon. After Moon got ill, I convinced Severus to get pet insurance for Beauty. What I didn't realize was that "27K is too much" to spend on a dying dog's treatment and care was only true for my dog.

For Beauty, no cost too much, no treatment to far. For her, there were no limits. I have no idea how much he ended up spending for all the chemotherapy drugs and treatment for Beauty, but I do know it was far-far more than what he was willing to do for Moon. After several months of treatment, Beauty finally succumbed to her illness in March 2024. This was pretty much exactly a week before my divorce was finalized.

Life was on hard mode. I'd lost both of our children, but I also saw a chance to be free of Severus for good. I learned from my mother's mistake and took our puppy Rainbow under my sole care when I decided to divorce him. And I never looked back.

What was lost in the decades of life I'll never get back

I realize now that I never had a real partner. A real partner would have been sympathetic to my concerns and my fears and helped me rise above them. Instead, I had a partner who echoed my vulnerabilities as they allowed them to continue to lie and manipulate the truth that they knew, which they could never allow me to have children and keep me in their life. What I couldn't see in my desperation to be loved was that my partner was amplifying my worries, planting a seed of doubt, all the while hoping I would never actually flourish.

That is what I can’t forget or forgive. The time wasted due to his lies and deceptions. The freedom of agency to have the full picture of who is really was and make my own decision was robbed from me for over a decade. And he expected me to move on in a matter of minutes, days, months.

It was extremely cruel.

Not only did he seek to quell my anger, he also seemed to push an open relationship to heal his trauma. Severus left me in shambles and went out to date other people less than a full month afterwards I asked to end our marriage. Not only that was trying to convince me that I was being unfair to him by not meeting him bring his new partners home, because it was a financial hardship for him to meet them in hotels. And he had sexual NEEDS to be met.  And when I said I wasn’t comfortable and didn’t know if I ever could be, I was preventing him from being his true-self. Severus again gaslighted me by saying "Maybe if I dated others during this time I wouldn’t still be so mad at him."

Good sir, I’m just trying to heal and not continue to be traumatized by your disrespect and unconsciousable behavior.

I still feel sorrow each and every time someone asks me, "How is your family?"; "If I have kids, or plan to have them someday?"; "If I'm dating or seeing anyone?"; "Where do I live, or call 'home'?" I know folks can sense my discomfort, but no one gets to see me cry in the darkness alone.

After all of this, I fully accept being the villain in his story, because in mine, he is the final boss.

*I have to add a caveat that I do not condone this, nor do I personally believe that sexual attraction to children is a true sexuality. In all known cases, the abusers were also victims of childhood trauma or childhood sexual abuse that was unhealed and unprocessed. Unhealed abuse begets abuse, and the cycle can only stop by first looking inward and healing the pain. If you want to learn more about this topic, I recommend starting with both Traumasexuality and No Bad Parts.